Information compiled by Lisa Giencke, December 2005
The UNC Herbarium at this
time only has databased a few specimens collected by Dr. Anne
Perkins.
Born in Maine in 1873, Dr. Perkins attended
Boston University Medical School from 1893-1897. By 1907 she settled
in Collins, N.Y. where she spent 25 years working on the medical
staff of Gowanda State Hospital.
During her career, Dr. Perkins "in the rather limited spare
time that close application to professional duties permitted"
came to be regarded as a skilled botanist and ornithologist. She
was an astute observer, collecting detailed information on the
locations and abundance of some rare plants in western New York.
Her botanizing of the area included the Cattaraugus Reservation
and localities throughout Erie, Cattaraugus and Chautauqua counties.
She was a frequent contributor not only to scholarly journals
in her profession, including American Speech,
but also to The Auk, the journal of the American
Ornithologists' Union and to Hobbies: The Magazine for
Collectors. She was also a Corresponding Member of the
Botanical Section of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences.
The few specimens at UNC were collected
in Florida after her retirement in 1932. In addition to her many
collections from New York and Maine, the Harvard University Herbaria
Index of Botanists lists her collecting localities as Mexico and
Puerto Rico.
Selected Publications:
Perkins, Anne E. 1920. Bird Notes from
Collins, N. Y. The Auk 37(4): 598.
Perkins, Anne E. 1922. Notes from Collins,
N. Y. The Auk 39(3): 424.
Perkins, Anne E. 1922. Breeding of the
Florida Gallinule in Ontario. The Auk 39(4): 564-565.
Perkins, Anne E. 1927. Notes from Erie County. Torreya 27: 105-106.
Perkins, Anne E. 1929. More Notes on Maine Dialect. American Speech
5(2): 118-131
Perkins, Anne E. 1931. Some unusual plants
of Erie County. Hobbies 11(8): 206-211.
Perkins, Anne E. 1935. Notes on Some Rare Birds in Southwestern
Maine. The Auk 52(4): 460.
Perkins, Anne E. 1941. Kingbird behavior. The Auk 61(1): 140.
